Rituals
by postureperfect
Summary: It is a ritual she is not sure she can ever give up on.


Disclaimer: Yeah standard stuff.. I don't own Harry Potter or Wuthering Heights…. You can tell by my rather unimaginative disclaimer….

Yeah... Better review... Feel free to insult me and decrease my nonexistent self-esteem.

She knows exactly where the grave is. A simple slab of drab grey stone with a few lines of meaningless words engraved on its face. A monument hardly fitting the savior of the world, they had said.

But a part of her is sure that he is looking down from the highest cloud of heaven, contently and bemusedly observing their guilt and embarrassment of having buried one of their greatest heroes in a plain oak coffin marked only by an ugly block less than a meter high surrounded by the bodies of unimportant, uninteresting, insignificant and most disappointingly non-magical people. Accountants, clerks, post-men and women of a hundred other inane professions that led equally inane lives.

But who were they to compromise the wishes of a man who had martyred his whole life freely and unquestioningly. Pangs of indignation and grief overwhelm her for a moment.

_He, after all had a choice. _

It's particularly windy today, despite the clear blue sky. The wind whistles in her ears and whips red hair into her already watering eyes. She shuts her burning eyes and walks tentatively. She trips over errant rocks but she can feel herself being drawn rather than led.

As though a part of her remained there, six feet under the earth, and the other part of her was being pulled toward it, desperate to be whole.

She's felt like this since her last glance of his pale unmarred body; just before the lid had hovered shut. Like the essence of her being had split of fragmented and had remained in that tomb of oak. Leaving her functioning but un-whole.

She suddenly stops and lifts her eyelids. Tears flow unimpeded and ignored. She can see the grey blur of the slab barely reaching her knees. Slowly she sinks to the grassy floor.

There had been a rumor that his body had not decayed despite the fact no preserving charm had been cast on it. That it had remained unchanged since he was lowered into the ground. That he simply looked like he had fallen asleep and he would stay like that for eternity because some of that potent magic that had once run through his veins lingered still on his earthly form.

She suddenly feels the morbid impulse to unearth his grace, to check if he still lies, with that calm unaffected countenance. While she tosses in her bed waiting for the forever evasive rest. And acids burnt her throat because food had become so repugnant to her that she could simply not hold it down for longer than ten minutes. If his 19 yr old face remained as tranquil whilst hers wasted away, ironically.

She remembers, years ago when she had borrowed a Muggle book of Hermione, who had commented that it was "complete drivel". She had silently been doubtful that Hermione was so scornful of it at the sight of the unusually dog-eared and tear stained pages. It had been called "Weathering Heights" or such. She had thought it to be absolute rubbish and that the antagonistic protagonist Heathcliff was a melodramatic lunatic. It was almost laughable that now, she had degraded enough to be capable of (childishly) empathizing with a deranged necrophilic fictional character.

She sorely wishes he was less of himself. Less of a Harry Potter, so she could simply throw an infantile tantrum, curse him and forget completely about him. That he were less of a hero and a martyr but more a flawed human so she could love him less and resent him more. So she could go back to living and not simply existing.

He had not even talked _that day. _New Years Eve of 1999. The day ending the old millennium and his legacy. Recorded in every existing non-fictional book onward.

He had simply gazed at her through his old spectacles with heavy but resolvedly calm green eyes. Unwilling to even speak to her, in case she would have forced those words from him and be bound to him. Unselfishly, stupidly and _obviously_ hoping that a month's silent treatment would disassociate her from him.

Because he had _known._

That he would sacrifice himself for a world of undeserving and ungrateful people.

It was ironic that he had lived unselfishly and died undemanding of remembrance of his legacy, or the fact himself, but had ended possessing what he had never wished for.

She is not the only one. She sees logical, pragmatic, self reliant Hermione engrossed in self-help books and she pretends not to see her at night crying silently or alternatively setting the cursed books alight. She listens to her hour-long sermons about the "5 steps to get over grief" and referrals to psychologists politely and kindly, because hypocrisy is rampant (in far worse forms) these days and she can forgive Hermione for grieving this way.

Her brother is worse, still in complete denial. Closing his eyes and ears figuratively and literally, whenever those four syllables were uttered or even remotely alluded to. He doesn't argue wholeheartedly any more but neither does he laugh genuinely.

It was as though their better halves had severed themselves and landed unsolicited at his metaphorical feet.

She's not blind to silent Blaise's long glances or Seamus' flirty banter. It seemed strangely, that men were even more attracted to her than before. Regardless of the pale skin and hollow cheeks.

She honestly wants to return Blaise's glance or say something equally suggestive to Seamus. But since the moment she had hear that name, Harry Potter her heart had bound itself to the idea of him if not the man himself. It was strange that their relationship was not fiery or even that passionate. It had been milder but more meaningful. She is afraid sometimes that she had knocked Harry out of the gilded pedestal as wholly as she had persuaded herself. She is ashamed that she does somewhat still idolize him. Her flaw, which left her incapable of dismissing him as her deceased past.

Ron and Hermione's relationship had splintered. Their fights had become serious and a vent of something other than sexual tension. Without Harry, without their mediator and conciliator they had drifted apart as lovers but remained close together in their loss of their best friend. And she is part of their strange triangle of grief but still apart for some reason.

She feels herself broken from her thoughts abruptly as a pair of gloved hands grasp her elbows and gently raise her up. Embarrassed at having been found in this position of weakness, she mutters an apology and wrests herself away from the hooded figure and walks to her car.

"Ginny…" she hears faintly her name spoken in a painfully familiar voice.

"Harry?" she calls chokingly, unbelievingly.

She turns immediately.

Through tear blurred eyes she sees a vague outline of a man. She wipes her eyes roughly with the back of her cold hand.

She opens her eyes tentatively, torn between the possibility and the impossibility of this situation.

All she sees is the slab of grey stone innocently glinting light, equally bare as the rows of identical graves which surround it.

She shakes herself slightly, reprimanding herself for such unreasonable expectancy.

He was dead, of course.

Probably up there in his heavenly abode looking down pitifully, magnanimous but exasperated at them all languishing after him hopelessly.

She returns to the Hermione's father's car. She turns the key, presses the pedal and takes the scenic route home avoiding any zealous policemen who would ask for her non-existent Muggle license.

She will be there next week and the week after that, for the rest of her life.

It is a ritual she is not sure she can ever give up on.

"And I pray one prayer--I repeat it till my tongue stiffens--Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you--haunt me, then!...Be with me always--take any form--drive me mad! only _do_ not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!"

_Heathcliff_ Chapter 16, pg. 153 Wuthering Heights. Emily Bronte

Notes eh?

1) Triangle. Sorry not a menage a trios thing. But maybe next time...(Kidding)

2) I do not like Wuthering Heights.. Really…

3) Heathcliff is cool.


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